When Night Falls
by sentinel28II
Summary: Tina Mattson and Sunset Shimmer meet face to face for the first time. And also the last. Justice is not always merciful. R&R if you like.
1. Terror in the Heartland

**_WHEN NIGHT FALLS_**

 _A_ My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic _Short Story_

 _By Sentinel 28A_

 _AUTHOR'S NOTE: I wrote this a few years ago, after the first_ Equestria Girls _movie came out. As a MLP fan, I can understand the message of forgiveness...but as an adult, I wonder if there would have been more ramifications for Sunset Shimmer's actions. To the "norms" unfamiliar with magic, Sunset's actions would've smacked of terrorism. And while later EGD movies have shown that Sunset didn't get off scot-free, in a more realistic world, there would've been far more than just resentment towards Sunset._

 _So,_ When Night Falls _is an exploration of what those ramifications just might mean. Old school anime fans might just catch who the main character is._

Agent William Collins was having a bad day.

As a senior agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, it was his job to help investigate incidents regarding any of those four items. Usually, this was fairly simple: moonshiners in the backwoods of the South, cigarette smugglers from Europe, gun shops selling illegal automatic weapons, accidents with high explosives. Occasionally, it involved terrorism, especially since the events of September 11. Given that Collins was assigned to the Midwest, the latter was blessedly rare. Most of his duties were, in fact, essentially that of a Federal policeman. He handed out more fines than prison time. It had been over a decade since he had drawn his weapon in anger.

This time, things were different.

He had been awoken from a sound sleep by an emergency call from downstate: an explosion had occurred at a high school. First responders had thought it a gas main explosion, which was terrible in its own right: Equestria High School was in the middle of its Fall Formal. Since damage to the school was significant, it was feared that there might be several dozen dead and many more wounded. To everyone's relief, no one was badly injured, let alone dead. That was fortunate. Unfortunately for Bill Collins' sleep, evidence pointed to an act of domestic terrorism.

A multiagency team was immediately dispatched to Equestria High, made up of agents from the FBI, ATFB, and Homeland Security, plus state and local police. As he was closest and most senior, Collins took the lead for the ATFB. One look at the school and Collins was stunned that there had been no casualties. Though the other agencies were still investigating, interviews with the student body and teachers present for the Fall Formal pointed towards one suspect: a young woman incongruously named Sunset Shimmer. When agents came to Shimmer's house, twenty-four hours after the incident, she had surrendered without a fight.

Collins leaned back in his chair, glanced at the pack of cigarettes on his desk, and fought down the urge to smoke. He was trying to quit, but any time he was in a quandary, the nicotine cravings got worse. He threw the pack into a desk drawer and pushed it shut. Then he sat up straight and opened Sunset Shimmer's file.

Shimmer had invoked her right to remain silent. A cursory investigation into her background turned up nothing suspicious. She had no connections to any foreign terrorist group, showed no tendency towards radical causes foreign or domestic, and had never committed crimes, aside from one instance of shoplifting at a mall a year previously. Her grades were superb and she had been consistently elected to student government, Glee Club, and was princess of the Fall Formal two years running. This was not the psychological profile of someone disgruntled with society, or someone angry with the country's foreign policy. In short, Sunset Shimmer showed none of the tendencies of a terrorist.

When the FBI had dug deeper, however, then the anomalies started showing up. Shimmer had no friends, and in fact seemed to shun others. She had been disciplined for bullying on several occasions. Flipping through the psychological profile, Collins was struck by the similarity to school shooters: few to no friends, a superiority complex, a hate for authority figures. Not all of those pointed towards a tendency to commit a violent act, but they were part of the classic profile. At first blush to Collins, it was an open-and-shut case: Shimmer was angry about something, and whatever it was pushed her over the edge. She had rigged a bomb—given the size of the crater in front of the high school, probably a car bomb—and attempted a mass casualty attack on her school. A young psychotic, motivated by revenge: sadly, nothing new for the ATFB, though it had never happened to Collins. Shimmer had some background in chemistry and science, not likely to be enough to be able to build something like a car bomb, but as Boston and Oklahoma City had shown, one did not need a great deal of experience or sophistication to pull something like this—and a bomber need only get lucky once. From the bruises, burns and scars on her body, she was by far the worst injured student, which was seen as a smoking gun: it was a botched bombing.

The FBI had dug a little deeper, and instead of the Equestria Bombing, as it was now known, being a relatively simple case, it had turned into the headache Collins was rapidly acquiring, from a bureaucratic point of view. Sunset Shimmer lived alone, which was unusual for a teenager; records of parents and relatives proved to be forged, though done in a very professional matter: Equestria High, the school district, even water and power companies were completely unaware that the only occupant of Shimmer's house was her.

The investigation was far from complete, but it looked very much like a pattern of forgeries and false fronts; attempts to begin a money trail were fruitless so far. It was as if Sunset Shimmer had simply appeared out of nowhere as a teenager five years ago. That was ominous, to say the least. It was something that spy agencies did to insert agents, though it was doubtful that any enemy of the United States would go to the trouble of inserting a spy into a high school at age thirteen. What had the agents assigned to the case worried was that Sunset Shimmer was somehow inserted in deep cover by a terrorist group: she had failed to inflict anything but property damage, but how many more were out there? It was the classic, terrifying dilemma: anyone and everyone could be a suspect.

Collins sighed, took out a stick of gum, and began chewing it. He put down Shimmer's file and picked up another, this one filled with the interviews of students and teachers at the formal, including the principal, Mary Celestia.

And that was where it got weird.

Every agent worth his or her salt knew that interviews taken immediately after an event were likely to be a little off. Shock would set in and ten people would give ten different versions of the story. Still, it was necessary to get the interviews while memory was still fresh, before news reports and other testimonies colored and changed one's recollections. Even the tiniest detail could be what blew a case open. So Collins was used to people seeing and hearing things, especially impressionable teenagers…but he had never run into anything like this.

The agents taking testimony were at first stunned, then angered at what the students were saying. The students were given stern warnings to quit trying to be funny, and a few switched their story around. Just as many stuck to their testimony, however. Investigators disbelievingly wrote on notepads and laptops about demons, crowns, magic and seeing six of their fellow students cast spells. The only thing that matched was that all of them had a memory lapse lasting anywhere from three minutes to ten. Agents, Collins included, were ready to call the whole thing a mass hallucination caused by the shock of the explosion, or possibly fumes from ruptured gas lines, or maybe (as one DHS agent had joked), the punch was spiked with LSD. None of this helped Sunset Shimmer's case any: besides the memory lapse, the only other thing that everyone agreed to was that she was responsible.

He jumped when there was a rapping on his door. "Come in."

Collins was surprised—pleasantly so—when the door admitted a particularly attractive woman. She was tall, almost at his own six feet, with a long fall of black hair, which he noted in passing was out of regulation for a government employee. She was pleasantly proportioned and filled out the richly-cut women's business suit and knee-length skirt rather well. Without meaning to, his eyes were drawn immediately to hers: they were a vivid purple, bright, almost luminous.

He realized she had caught him looking at her. She smiled to show she took no offense. "Agent Collins?" She stuck out a well-manicured hand. "My name is Tina Mattson."


	2. Who is Sunset Shimmer?

Bill Collins came out from behind his desk and shook hands. "Miss…?" he hesitatingly began. At her nod, he continued, "Miss Mattson. I got your call only an hour ago."

"Yes; sorry for the short notice," Tina Mattson replied. "The agency called me in on the Equestria bombing only this morning, so don't feel bad."

He motioned to a chair and resumed his seat. He opened up a small refrigerator. "Coke?"

"Certainly." The accent was hard to place, Collins thought; there was just the hint of a British accent, but it was more Middle Atlantic. Ivy League schooling, then. She was wearing a security badge, but already had her identification out. He checked it, then her paperwork that she withdrew from an inner pocket of her suit; he noted in passing that she did not carry a firearm, or if she did, it was not in the customary shoulder holster. He whistled softly when he read the paperwork: Agent Mattson had a higher security clearance than he did.

"Washington said you were a specialist," Collins said, returning the paperwork and shoving the Shimmer files over to her.

"That's right." She opened the folders, frowned, withdrew a pair of reading glasses from another pocket, and scanned them.

"In school, um, incidents?"

She looked at him over the top of her glasses, which made her even prettier, Collins decided. "Actually, no." She took off the glasses. "For lack of a better word, I would say…weird happenings." She laughed a little. "In fact, my branch of the agency was originally going to be called the Weird Happenings Organization, but it turns out that's trademarked. So they settled on Agency Zero." She rolled her eyes. "Makes us sound _very_ ominous, but really it's pretty mundane."

"So what is it that Agency Zero does?"

"Investigates crimes that don't make sense, basically. Someone reports seeing a UFO, the Air Force can't or won't verify that it's a load of bull, you start getting calls to the mayor or governor or whatever, and someone calls us. A lot of the time it turns out to be nothing: someone saw a military plane over central Nevada and immediately assumed it was aliens." She shrugged. "If I had a dime for every time I've interviewed someone who turned out to be a drunk redneck with too much moonshine on board, I could retire."

"Ever actually found anything you couldn't solve?" Collins didn't expect to get an answer, and was mildly surprised when he did.

"Oh, certainly. I would say a good third of our cases remain unsolved." She smiled again. "A plane disappears over the Bermuda Triangle. We get called, we can't prove foul play or anything else, so the case remains unsolved. Anyone with a brain knows that someone just flew his Cessna into the water on a moonless night, but without a body or evidence, we have to leave it open. Next thing you know, some crank is calling midnight talk radio to say that they were abducted by aliens and saw the missing person. It's sad and stupid, but there you are." She replaced her glasses. "If you don't mind…"

"Right." He let her read the file in silence. When she was done looking over what little was known of Sunset Shimmer and the interviews, she put her glasses away, sat back, and took a long drink of soda. "What do you think?" he asked.

"I'm not sure, to be honest." She tapped the folders. "We have the entire façade of a school blown off and a crater fifty feet deep by sixty feet wide, with the leaves blown off the trees and most of the windows shattered. Classic car bomb scenario—except there's no car, no parts, not even a hint of explosive residue."

"Which is impossible," Collins added.

"Exactly. Which means that either the ATFB has missed something…" her voice trailed off, watching his reaction. He shrugged: it was possible. "Well, it's only been 72 hours. In Sunset Shimmer's case, we have someone who doesn't appear to have existed six years ago. We have a birth certificate, but it's forged. The parents named convienently died in a car wreck ten years ago, and there's no record of a foster family."

"The forgeries were professionally done, too."

"Indeed," Mattson answered. "Everyone in the city was fooled. It was only because the FBI ended up suspecting forgery that she was even caught."

"Okay, but did you read the weird stuff?"

"Oh my, yes." She shook her head in wonder. "Sunset Shimmer became some sort of a winged demon after putting on the Fall Formal crown. She then transformed two other students into demons, tore the front off the school, and did everything in the Cartoon Villain handbook, up to and including the cackling laughter. All we need is thunder and lightning." She sniffed a laugh. "Then everyone has a massive memory loss. They wake up, as it were, with a crater in front of the school and Shimmer back to normal, curled up in a ball and crying her eyes out. End of testimony." She sighed. "That's what about half of them say, anyhow. The others claim seeing Shimmer parking a car out front and setting off a bomb. There's even one person who insists that Shimmer intended to kill everyone at the formal because she lost out to this…what was the name?"

"Twilight Sparkle," Collins supplied. "What is it with parents giving their kids weird names? They didn't do that when I was growing up." He reached over and pulled the Shimmer file back to him. "It gets freakier. There's no record of Twilight Sparkle in school files, but the principal, several teachers, and some kid named Flash Sentry insists that she's a real person. It's like she showed up out of nowhere too and disappeared just as quickly."

"You think she was killed?"

"We haven't found anything like body parts—not even skin. It would take a bomb a lot more powerful than that to vaporize someone. No one's filed a missing persons report either." He finished the Coke. "Now according to the kids, she was palling with some others…" Collins checked the file. "Your agency interviewed these six, and they don't know a damn thing about a Twilight Sparkle. They were at the Formal, and their testimony doesn't match up. Amy Applejack holds to the demon story; in fact, she's pretty damn detailed about it. Riana Verdunnt claims that she showed up late and missed the whole thing. Fluttershy Everfree—you _know_ her parents were hippies—broke down crying; best we could figure out was that she's sticking to the demon story. Rainbow Dash, which has got to be a nickname, started screaming about her rights and finally told us she didn't see a damn thing other than Sunset Shimmer causing trouble. And this Diane Pinkamena…" Collins closed the file. "She talked so fast the agents couldn't get anything out of her. What they did get made even less sense than anything else."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. "Is Sunset Shimmer being held here?" Mattson asked.

"Yeah, downstairs. She's been quiet. We Mirandized her, so she knows her rights. Given the evidence, she's being charged with a ton of counts of forgery and mail fraud. We're holding off on any terrorism charges until we get something more concrete, but the paperwork's already there. She's going to jail for sure, but the question now is if she goes for ten years for fraud or life for attempted first-degree murder." He paused. "Or death if it turns out she knocked off this Twilight Sparkle character."

"Can I see her?"

Collins got up. "Yeah. Let's go."


	3. The Interrogation

"Well…she's definitely unusual," Tina Mattson said as she and Bill Collins looked through the one-way mirror. Sunset Shimmer sat on the other side, wearing orange prison garb. It blended well with her striking hair: bright red with yellow highlights that flowed through it like waves—Shimmer apparently took her name seriously enough to make her hair reflect it. Her expression was vacant, and she stared into nothing. Her hands were unbound.

"Do you mind if I speak with her alone?" Mattson asked Collins.

"Not at all. I figured you'd want to. She's not considered violent, but…" He put a hand on his pistol, in its shoulder holster. "Do you want it?"

"I doubt it'll come to that, Mr. Collins. I can take care of myself." She winked. "Besides, if I do need you, you're right here, correct?"

"You bet." He nodded at her. "Good luck. No one else has had any."

* * *

Mattson closed the door behind her. She carried with her a tray with two water bottles and Shimmer's file. Using her feet, she scooted out the chair opposite Shimmer, sat down, and pushed a bottle towards the girl. "Go ahead, drink it. You've got to be a little thirsty." According to Collins, Shimmer was eating and drinking, but just enough to keep herself alive. She seemed detached from the world around her, but dutifully reached for the bottle, unscrewed the top, and took a drink. Mattson set aside one bottle for herself and slid the file between them.

She let the silence stretch for awhile; it was an old interrogator's trick. If a suspect was chatty at heart, or had a guilty conscience, they might start talking. Shimmer said nothing.

"Miss Shimmer," Mattson finally said, "my name is Tina Mattson. I'm an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I suspect you know why I'm here." Shimmer nodded slowly. "Good. Now the reason why I'm here is to talk with you. That's all. I'm a psychologist—" she left off the _criminal_ part of her title "—and I want to help you.

"As of now, you've been charged with several counts of forgery, mail fraud, and some other minor charges. Assuming a jury finds you guilty—and given the amount of evidence the FBI, the ATFE, and DHS has collected on you, they likely will—you will be going to jail. I should also mention that, given that you are eighteen years of age, you will be tried as an adult. The question you face is this: are you going to a minimum-security prison for ten years with eligibility for parole in three years…or are you going to a high-security prison for domestic terrorism and conspiracy to commit mass murder for life with no eligibility for parole?" She watched Shimmer's face carefully and saw the girl blanch. "There's also the possibility that you might even be charged with first-degree murder of one Twilight Sparkle." There was a definite reaction that time, but Mattson could not place if it was rage, regret, or fear. Still, Shimmer did nothing but take another drink of water.

The silence stretched for long moments, then Mattson sighed. She said something softly under her breath and took a drink of water. Some of it splashed on her hands, and she flicked it away, almost in a pattern. Once she was done, she set down the bottle and faced the girl squarely.

"Listen to me very carefully, Sunset Shimmer," she said quietly. "I know what you are. I know what you did. And I am telling you to be very, very honest with me, or a human prison is the _least_ punishment you face."

Shimmer blinked. "What?" she said.

"Right now, the people behind that mirror—" Mattson gestured nonchalantly at the one-way window "—are hearing whatever I want them to hear. They can hear a confession of guilt, or complete innocence, or me having a one-sided conversation with you. But I can tell you this: if you don't tell me the truth, they're going to hear about how little Sunset Shimmer conspired to kill her fellow students, and _did_ kill Twilight Sparkle. That's a capital offense."

"I don't understand," Shimmer replied.

"Let me put it this way: you're not the only one who can cast magic around here."

Shimmer's mouth fell open, and she recoiled in terror. "You're…your shadow…"

"Yes. Now shall we cut the bullshit?" Mattson opened the file. "Now the mundanes over there don't know where you came from, but I know very well that you are not human. Not originally. You're radiating magic all over the place." She took out a sheaf of papers from her suit; they were not the same sheaf of papers she had given Collins. "These are statements from five students whose lives you attempted to ruin, and possibly end: Amy Applejack, Riana 'Rarity' Verdunnt, Fluttershy Everfree, 'Rainbow' Peggy Dash, and Diane 'Pinkie Pie' Pinkamena. All of them had some very interesting stories to tell me; luckily for you I got to them before the FBI or the ATFE. Can you guess at what that is?" When Shimmer hesitated, Mattson's voice became a snarl. "Answer me."

"I have rights—"

"Yes, you do. As a human being and a citizen of this nation, you have the right to remain silent. But you're not human and you're not a citizen, so you don't have rights as far as I am concerned." Mattson's eyes narrowed. "I can compel you to answer, but I don't think you really want me to do that." Shimmer turned very pale. Mattson could see that sparked a bad memory. "Now talk to me."

Shimmer looked away and Mattson knew she had won. She did not feel particularly triumphant.

* * *

At last, Shimmer began to speak. "Sunset Shimmer is my real name."

"I figured no one would make something like that up."

Shimmer shakily took another drink. "Um…as you say, I'm not human, though for all intents and purposes I am. But not originally. Originally I am…was…a unicorn pony from the land of Equestria. I was a student of the ruler of Equestria and the greatest sorceress in the land, an alicorn named Princess Celestia. An alicorn is—"

"I know what an alicorn is. I have quite the working knowledge of mythology."

"Uh, yes. In any case, Celestia held me back. She didn't want me to learn certain things." Now Mattson could see the anger rising. Shimmer's voice lost its tremor. "I wanted to be an equal to her. I wanted respect. She wouldn't give it to me. She wouldn't let me learn. I just wanted to be an alicorn, like her. I wanted to rule. I mean, that simpleton Cadance is an alicorn! What makes her so special, just because she's related to the royal family? What a load of horseapples—"

"Sunset Shimmer." Mattson's voice brought her back to the here and now. "Please stick to the point." Her voice lost some of its edge. "I know what dealing with royalty is like. Go on."

Shimmer took a breath. "When Celestia wouldn't let me learn what I wanted to, I got very mad. Angry, I mean. I rebelled, but I was just a student. I didn't have a chance. She kicked me out, but she didn't know I'd already decided to leave. So I did. I left Equestria through a magic mirror and came here."

"It must've been rough to learn you were a teenager here."

"It was, but I adapted just fine." Now Shimmer was on a roll. Mattson had already figured out that Shimmer liked to talk about herself, and let her do so. "I used my magic to forge my identity. I figured out quickly that you can't get anywhere here without some sort of background. I looked up some people that died a while back in a car crash and took over their identity. The rest was easy, once I had established all of that. I enrolled in middle school, got through that easily, and made my way into high school."

"Staying under the radar."

"I knew humans would find me suspicious if I didn't go to school. I figured this was the easiest way to stay hidden. Occasionally I went back to Equestria to see how things were going and try to figure out how to get back at that bitch Celestia, but I had to be very careful."

"I can imagine," Mattson said sympathetically. "This Celestia sounds very frightening."

"You don't know the half of it. She exiled her sister to the moon for a thousand years."

"A thousand years?"

Shimmer nodded emphatically. "See what I mean?"

"Indeed. Please, continue."

"Well, I found out that after I was unfairly kicked out, Celestia adopted another student, Twilight Sparkle." Mattson nodded; now they were getting somewhere. "Little Miss Perfect Twilight. Somehow, she finagled her way into Celestia's trust, and got hold of the Elements of Harmony." Before Mattson could ask, Shimmer told her. "They're very powerful magical artifacts. I knew if I got control of those...

"So I bided my time. When I found out that Twilight got to be an alicorn—" Shimmer's fists clenched and she actually ground her teeth "—I knew I had to make my move. I'd already pretty much taken over Equestria High—"

"Sorry to interrupt, but I noticed the similarities between your world of origin and the name of the high school," Mattson said.

"Oh yes. Turns out that this world is a reflection of Equestria. Everyone here has a pony counterpart there. They're very similar. So far I think it's just this town. Apparently it's some sort of nexus or something. Even Celestia has an opposite number—Mary Celestia, the principal of my school. Even that dimwit Trixie Lullamoon has someone here just like her. It's a bit like that one _Star Trek_ episode, the one with the mirror universe."

"Fascinating," Mattson replied, deadpan. "So, you went after these Elements of Harmony to overthrow this tyrannical sun goddess…"

"I stole Twilight's crown easily enough, and I knew Celestia would send her after me," Shimmer explained. "I was ready. I knew Twilight would end up finding her friends' counterparts here, but I'd already driven them apart so they couldn't help her. Twilight didn't have a few months to figure out human customs and such. She made such a fool out of herself!" Shimmer laughed.

"How so?"

"Walking around on all fours, trying to use her fingers like hooves, that sort of thing."

Mattson snickered. "God, you didn't introduce her to the internet, did you?"

"No; I imagine she did that herself."

They shared a laugh at that. "Poor girl."

"Yeah…" Shimmer abruptly became angry, a slow burning fuse rather than towering rage. "Turns out Twilight managed to get her friends back together. She even got Flash Sentry on her side—Flash Sentry! The most popular boy in school and my former boyfriend!" Shimmer shook her head. "I underestimated her. I admit that. And she took me by surprise when she was willing to give up her chance to go home to fight me for the crown. She got herself elected princess of the Fall Formal, but I got the crown anyway."

"And that's when everything went wrong." Mattson ran her hands over the file. "Becoming a demon, and all."

Shimmer sighed. "Do you know what it's like to have that much power at your fingertips? To realize that you're more powerful than anyone else, ever? That you can do anything?" She looked down. "I loved it. I wanted more. I wanted Equestria. I wanted to see Celestia _begging_ at my feet for mercy."

"Do you still?" Mattson asked softly.

"I…don't know." Shimmer regarded her reflection in the water bottle. "The crown did something to me. I had everything, Agent Mattson. Everything. And somehow…Twilight and her friends stopped me. They didn't have magical items. She didn't even have her crown. She just had…friendship." Tears formed at the edges of Shimmer's eyes. "I don't understand how she did it. It's like she summoned the Elements from Equestria and gave them to her friends. How can she do that? She's not powerful enough to do that. Not even Celestia's that powerful…is she?"

* * *

Shimmer's voice trailed off. She had reached the end of her story. Mattson closed the file. "That leaves me with one question, Sunset Shimmer. Why?" Shimmer was obviously confused, so Mattson elaborated. "You were a very powerful demon, with apparently unlimited power. According to Applejack's testimony, and others, you enslaved the school with a mind-control spell and intended to use them as your army to retake Equestria. Is Celestia's army so small that a student body of less than a thousand could take the realm?"

Shimmer said nothing for a long moment. "I thought that…if I brought the humans through the portal…Celestia wouldn't hurt them because she knew they were innocent. That would distract her long enough for me to use the crown against her."

"If she was the tyrant you say she is, she would kill the humans without a second thought." Mattson tapped her fingers on the table. "Which is it, Sunset Shimmer? Is this Celestia a genocidal tyrant, or a fair ruler who was merely disciplining a student who had grown selfish, ambitious and foolish?" She let that sink in a moment, then continued, her voice rising. "A student who was so self-centered she was willing to sacrifice a thousand young men and women for her own petty revenge? Young people who might, under certain circumstances, be the friends you wouldn't allow them to be?" Mattson felt her own anger swelling, and brought herself under control. "We have words for people like that, Sunset. We call _them_ tyrants." She stared at Shimmer sadly. "You may not be familiar with the human philosopher Nietzsche, but he once wrote that those who stare into the abyss too long become the abyss themselves. A monster we are, lest monsters we become, and all that. Except you were _already_ a monster, Sunset. You chose that path for yourself willingly and freely, long before you became a demon. And for that you _will_ pay."

Shimmer shuddered. "What…what does that mean?"

"I don't know yet. Human justice and my justice are different, sometimes. If it was me, I would kill you. I still may have to, because you're not only a threat to Equestria, you're also a threat to this world as well. You're a threat to everyone. My job is to eliminate those threats. That's what I came here for."

"You're going to kill me, then?" Shimmer's eyes were round with fear.

"Perhaps. It depends on what my superiors decide. For now, you're just going to jail. My suggestion is that whatever deal comes your way, you take it. It's infinitely better than what I will do to you." Mattson stood, gathered up the files, papers, and bottles, and regarded Sunset Shimmer. "Maybe, just maybe, you'll learn what it means to have friends, and just what you've thrown away. Then maybe you can find hope. I don't know. I personally think you're too far gone for that."

Shimmer looked terrified now, as if she was staring into the open gates of hell. "You hate me?" She began to cry.

"For what you almost did? For what you intended to do?" Mattson's voice was pitiless. "Yes, I do."


End file.
